Last week, the community of Gita, Uganda celebrated the groundbreaking of a new academy largely supported and designed by sources within the University community.
The University’s student chapter of Building Tomorrow undertook fundraising efforts for the project, while the Architecture School’s reCOVER initiative and the Engineering School’s Engineering in Context Design Program managed the design aspects. According to Maggie Kirkpatrick, Building Tomorrow assistant director for partnerships and University alumna, Building Tomorrow is an international non-profit organization that seeks to raise funds and awareness to build schools in Africa.
Meredyth Gilmore, president of the University chapter of Building Tomorrow, said the Gita community is currently facing a number of social and economic problems, including an HIV/AIDS epidemic, the difficulty of providing care for a large number of orphaned children and a lack of capital to build schools and poverty.
She explained that the combination of these and other factors often prevent local children from attending schools.
“It’s really heartbreaking to see a 9-year-old [child] who spends his entire day [making] bricks and will probably do that for his entire life if there isn’t some sort of intervention,” Gilmore said. “Building the school helps [the community] overcome that lack of capital and provides them means by which 350 students can get into the school where they wouldn’t have been able to in the past.”
Gilmore noted that the University chapter of Building Tomorrow has coordinated a number of fundraising efforts to pay for the academy. She said some of these events, such as Bike to Uganda, were hosted by the organization itself, whereas others, such as the Medical School’s pancake fundraiser and the Greek community’s Mid-Autumns Carnival, were collaborations with other groups.
Kirkpatrick added that the local Ugandan community will provide 25,000 hours of labor as part of a cost-sharing agreement with Building Tomorrow. She said grandparents, parents and other individuals close to the academy’s future students are a large source of volunteers for the project.
Gilmore said it would be ideal if money could be supplied to the local economy by paying the community volunteers, but budget constraints have prevented this from occurring.
“Unfortunately, the reality of fundraising is that we just don’t have enough money to pay for labor, but the community members are really supportive of the school and they want to do anything they can, including helping building it to get the school in their community,” Gilmore said.
Asst. Architecture Prof. Anselmo Canfora, director of Initiative reCOVER, said he worked with 18 fourth-year students and a graduate student last spring on the project after collaborating with students from another studio reCOVER group last fall. The spring 2008 studio reCOVER group, he said, worked with Engineering students and faculty participating in the program Engineering in Context. Another partner in the design efforts, Canfora said, was the U.K.-based architecture and engineering firm Arup Partners.
Canfora explained that Engineering students helped to develop both a water filtration system and an electric system powered by solar energy panels that will be installed on the building’s roof. Kirkpatrick, however, noted that cost constraints have prevented the school currently under construction from including the water and power systems designed by the engineering group. She said the building’s design still allows for these utilities to be added in the future, though.
Aside from cost constraints, Canfora noted that there were a number of other challenges in designing the academy, including the desire to create a positive environment while working with local materials and construction expertise.
“Making the classrooms better spaces to learn ... was something we had to balance with what materials we had available to use and what were the local sorts of skill-sets,” Canfora said.
Canfora said the project’s local community volunteers will be supervised by experienced local builders, including masons and carpenters.
“You do have a lot of folks who maybe have not built before and are investing sweat equity for the sake of their kids, which is an amazing thing,” Canfora said.
If the project is successful, more projects like it may be on the horizon. Gilmore said the University’s chapter of Building Tomorrow has set a goal of eventually raising enough money to build a new school each year.
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